Journey Into the Embrace of Risk: A Collaboration of Allies Across Races and Conferences

• In Event: Women’s Ways of Mentoring in the Academy: Reflections Across Transnational Borders

Abstract

Purposes
Our objective is to narrate a model of relational mentoring based on mutual benefit, alliance, and inclusivity, and forged through travel or journey. We describe our journey across the United States as a quest to share and develop our work on leadership praxis and find narrative methods through which to learn about ourselves as allies, co-mentors, and collaborators. We began with a shared excursion to the Critical Race Studies in Education Conference followed by a trek to the Narrative Works in Progress Conference involving two papers: 1) to share our research on educational leadership preparation an expression of critical race praxis and 2) to capture the journey in a collaborative auto/biography of a cross-racial and ethnic alliance.
Perspectives
Our journey into the embrace of risk is informed by the Leonardo and Porter’s (2010) advocacy of race conscious discourse that shuns the notion of safety, for it generally reflects safety for those with the power to shape or avoid dialogue about race and racism due to fear. They suggest that we embrace risk, confront “safety” and “comfort” through a pedagogy of fear, and acknowledge power and privilege. Pertinent to our work together toward anti-oppressive educational leadership is the acknowledgement of “the disproportionate amount of power, privilege, and risk experienced by faculty of color and faculty who are White when race is at the heart of the discussion (Rusch & Horsford, 2009).
Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
In this narrative approach to inquiry we rely on metaphors. “Metaphor is one of our most important tools for trying to comprehend partially what cannot be comprehended totally: our feelings, aesthetic experiences, moral practices, and spiritual awareness” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 114). Metaphors help to constitute our conceptual system and therefore shape our perceptions, actions, and relationships. Through metaphors of journey, safety, risk, and climate we reflect on our experience at two conferences - the warmth of San Antonio and the coolness of Anchorage. We describe our perception of the climate (i.e., political intensity) related to the role of research and researchers in social change and the meanings of counternarratives expressed by organizers, attendees, and reflected in the scholarship referenced at the two conferences.
Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
Data includes photographs, videos, fieldnotes, and conference programs.
Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view
The major concepts that we confront on this journey are counternarratives, identity, and safety (i.e., “the safety of others”). 1) Climates and discourses (safety and/or fear, risk), 2) Identity and roles of research and researchers (activist and/or scholar, allies), 3) Counternarratives (praxis and/or dialogue).
Scholarly significance of the study
Our collaborative journey as assistant professors is mapped by intersecting and analogous experiences, commitments, and values, and marked by the tenure clock. Journeys of relational mentoring across cultures (Cluttterbuck, 2007; Fletcher & Ragins, 2007) are few, especially those that involve risk taking, dialogue, and horizontal relationship (Darwin, 2007). This paper addresses informal co-mentoring among educational researchers from the perspective that to know is not enough.

Authors

• Vonzell Agosto, University of South Florida

• Zorka Karanxha, University of South Florida